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Of Popes and Unicorns

Author: David Hutchings

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-11-03

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0190053097

This is the story of John Draper, Andrew White, and the conflict thesis: a centuries-old misconception that religion and science are at odds with one another. Renowned scientist John William Draper (1811-1882) and celebrated historian-politician Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918) were certain that Enlightened Science and Dogmatic Christianity were mortal enemies--and they said as much to anyone who would listen. More than a century later, their grand and sweeping version of history dominates our landscape; Draper and White's conflict thesis is still found in countless textbooks, lecture series, movies, novels, and more. Yet, as it would later be discovered, they were mistaken. Their work has been torn to shreds by the experts, who have declared it totally at odds with reality. So how, if this is the case, does their wrongheaded narrative still live on? Who were these two men, and what, exactly, did they say? What is it about their God-versus-Science conflict thesis that convinced so many? And what--since both claimed to love Science and love Christ--were they actually trying to achieve in the first place? In this book, physicist David Hutchings and historian of science and religion James C. Ungureanu dissect the work of Draper and White. They take readers on a journey through time, diving into the formation and fallacy of the conflict thesis and its polarizing impact on society. The result is a tale of Flat Earths, of anesthetic, and of autopsies; of Creation and Evolution; of laser-eyed lizards and infinite worlds. It is a story of miracles and mathematicians; souls and Great Libraries; the Greeks, the scientific method, the Not-So-Dark-After-All Ages... and, of course, of popes and unicorns.

The New Atheism, Myth, and History

Author: Nathan Johnstone

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-06-11

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 3319894560

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This book examines the misuse of history in New Atheism and militant anti-religion. It looks at how episodes such as the Witch-hunt, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust are mythologized to present religion as inescapably prone to violence and discrimination, whilst the darker side of atheist history, such as its involvement in Stalinism, is denied. At the same time, another constructed history—that of a perpetual and one-sided conflict between religion and science/rationalism—is commonly used by militant atheists to suggest the innate superiority of the non-religious mind. In a number of detailed case studies, the book traces how these myths have long been overturned by historians, and argues that the New Atheism’s cavalier use of history is indicative of a troubling approach to the humanities in general. Nathan Johnstone engages directly with the God debate at an academic level and contributes to the emerging study of non-religion as a culture and an identity.

Let there be Science

Author: Tom McLeish

Publisher: Lion Books

Published: 2017-01-20

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0745968643

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Why is it that science has consistently thrived wherever the Christian faith can be found? Why is it that so many great scientists - past and present - attribute their motivation and their discoveries, at least partially, to their Christian beliefs? Why are the age-old writings of the Bible so full of questions about natural phenomena? And, perhaps most importantly of all, why is all this virtually unknown to the general public? Too often, it would seem, science has been presented to the outside world as a robotic, detached, unemotional enterprise. Too often, Christianity is dismissed as being an ancient superstition. In reality, neither is the case. Science is a deeply human activity, and Christianity is deeply reasonable. Perhaps this is why, from ancient times right up to today, many individuals have been profoundly committed to both - and have helped us to understand more and more about the extraordinary world that we live in. As authors Tom McLeish and David Hutchings examine the story of science, and look at the part that Christianity has played, they uncover a powerful underlying reason for doing science in the first place. In example after example, ranging from 4000 BC to the present day, they show that thinking with a Christian worldview has been intimately involved with, and sometimes even directly responsible for, some of the biggest leaps forward ever made. Ultimately, they portray a biblical God who loves Science - and a Science that truly needs God.

Faithful to Science

Author: Andrew M. Steane

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0198716044

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Science and religious faith are two of the most important and influential forces in human life, yet there is widespread confusion about how, or indeed whether, they link together. This book describes this combination from the perspective of one who finds that they link together productively and creatively. The situation is not one of conflict or uneasy tension, or even a respectful dialogue. Rather, a lively and well-founded faith in God embraces and includes science, and scientific ways of thinking, in their proper role. Science is an activity right in the bloodstream of a reasonable faith. The book interprets theism broadly, and engages carefully with atheism, while coming from a Christian perspective. The aim is to show what science is, and what it is not, and at the same time give some pointers to what theism is or can be. Philosophy, evolution and the nature of science and human life are discussed in the first part of the book, questions of origins in the second. It is the very mind-set of scientific thinking that is widely supposed to be antagonistic to religious faith. But such suspicions are too sweeping. They misunderstand both faith and science. Faith can be creative and intellectually courageous; science is not the all-embracing story that it is sometimes made out to be. It is not that science fails to explain some things, but rather, it does not explain anything at all, on its own. It is part of a larger explanation. And even explanation has to take a humble place; it is not the purpose of life.

Baudolino

Author: Umberto Eco

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2014-08-28

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 1473512220

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An extraordinary epic, brilliantly-imagined, new novel from a world-class writer and author of The Name of the Rose. Discover the Middle Ages with Baudolino - a wondrous, dazzling, beguiling tale of history, myth and invention. It is 1204, and Constantinople is being sacked and burned by the knights of the fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion Baudolino saves a Byzantine historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors, and proceeds to tell his own fantastical story.

The Popes, the Catholic Church and the Transatlantic Enslavement of Black Africans 1418-1839

Author: Pius Onyemechi Adiele

Publisher: Georg Olms Verlag

Published: 2017-09-01

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 3487155974

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Mehr als 400 Jahre lang erlitten schwarzafrikanische Männer, Frauen und Kinder während des transatlantischen Sklavenhandels schlimmste Formen der Versklavung und Erniedrigung durch Katholiken und das westliche Christentum. Damals wie heute glaubte niemand an die tiefe Verwicklung der Kirche und des Papsttums in den schwarzafrikanischen Holocaust. Trotz jüngster Behauptungen des päpstlichen Officiums in Rom, wonach die Päpste jegliche Form von Sklaverei verurteilten, so auch im Falle der Versklavung von Schwarzafrikanern, verweisen neuere Studien innerhalb dieses Forschungsfeldes auf das Gegenteil. Die Kirche und die Päpste nahmen vielmehr zentrale Rollen in diesem schlimmsten Verbrechen gegen die Schwarzafrikaner seit Beginn der schriftlichen Dokumentation ein. Mithilfe zahlreicher päpstlicher Bullen aus den Geheimarchiven des Vatikans und einer Vielzahl an königlichen Dokumenten aus dem portugiesischen Nationalarchiv in Lissabon, strebt der vorliegende Band eine kritische und analytische Untersuchung dieses Aspekts des transatlantischen Sklavenhandels an, der über so viele Jahre von den westlichen Historikern und Gelehrten verschleiert wurde. For over 400 years, Black African men, women and children suffered the worst type of enslavement and humiliation from the hands of Catholics and other Western Christians during the transatlantic slave trade. Before now, no one could ever believe that the Popes of the Church were deeply involved in this Holocaust against Black African people. Despite the claims made by the hallowed papal office in Rome in recent years that the Popes condemned the enslavement of peoples wherever it existed including that of Black Africans, recent researches in these fields of study have proved the contrary to be true. The Church and her Popes were rather among the major “role players” in this worst crime against Black Africans in recorded history. With the help of a considerable number of papal Bulls from the Vatican Secret Archives and a great amount of Royal documents from the Portuguese National Archives in Lisbon, the present book is aiming to undertake a critical and analytical inquiry of this aspect of the transatlantic slavery that has been kept in the dark for so many years by the Western historians and scholars. The results of this studious but fruitful academic inquiry are laid bare in this notable work of the 21st century. Pius Onyemechi Adiele is a Catholic priest of Ahiara Diocese Mbaise and an alumnus of Seat of Wisdom Seminary Owerri and Bigard Memorial Seminary Enugu in Nigeria. He obtained his licentiate in Theology from the famous University of Münster and his doctoral degree in Church History from the renowned University of Tübingen in Germany. At present, he is a research fellow in the areas of African Church History and Enslavement of peoples as well as the pastor in charge of the merged parishes of Lauchheim, Westhausen, Lippach, Röttingen and Hülen in Germany.

The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God

Author: Justin Brierley

Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers

Published: 2023-09-12

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1496466772

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Could We Be Witnessing a Return of Belief in Our Generation?Justin Brierley, the host of the popular radio show and podcast Unbelievable?, is convinced that in our time we are witnessing a growing wave of faith.Famously described as the "long, withdrawing roar" of the "Sea of Faith," the Christian narrative that shaped the West has been replaced by sweeping secularism. But is that the end of the story?It was a conversation with agnostic journalist Douglas Murray that led Brierley to investigate whether a change was on the horizon. Speaking of the "Sea of Faith," Murray remarked that tides come back in again and that a number of his intelligent friends had converted to Christianity in recent years. Brierley was seeing a similar trend among the secular thinkers he had interviewed on his show. Jordan Peterson, Tom Holland, Dave Rubin, and many others have found themselves surprised by the continuing resonance and relevance of Christianity, and they are joining in on conversations about faith.Readers will encounter Brierley's discussion of cultural trends and concepts including: The meaning crisis Public intellectuals embracing faith Why the Christianity story is ready to return And much moreIn The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, Brierley outlines the dramatic fall of New Atheism and the birth of a new conversation on whether God makes sense of science, history, culture, and the search for meaning. People are returning to Christianity--but is the church prepared to welcome a new wave of faith?There's a new conversation building. The tide is coming.

Science, Religion and Nationalism

Author: Jaume Navarro

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-01-16

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1003834426

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“Science” and “Religion” have been two major elements in the building of modern nation-states. While contemporary historiography of science has studied the interactions between nation building and the construction of modern scientific and technological institutions, “science-and-religion” is still largely based on a supposed universal historiography in which global notions of “science” and of “religion” are seldom challenged. This book explores the interface between science, religion and nationalism at a local level, paying attention to the roles religious institutions, specific confessional traditions, or an undefined notion of “religion” played in the construction of modern science in national contexts: the use of anti-clerical rhetoric as scapegoat for a perceived scientific and technological backwardness; the part of religious tropes in the emergence of a sense of belonging in new states; the creation of “invented traditions” that included religious and scientific myths so as to promote new identities; the struggles among different confessional traditions in their claims to pre-eminence within a specific nation-state, etc. Moreover, the chapters in this book illuminate the processes by which religious myths and institutions were largely substituted by stories of progress in science and technology which often contributed to nationalistic ideologies.

Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World

Author: Alexandra Roginski

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-05-31

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 1009021095

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The contentious science of phrenology once promised insight into character and intellect through external 'reading' of the head. In the transforming settler-colonial landscapes of nineteenth-century Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, popular phrenologists – figures who often hailed from the margins – performed their science of touch and cranial jargon everywhere from mechanics' institutions to public houses. In this compelling work, Alexandra Roginski recounts a history of this everyday practice, exploring how it featured in the fates of people living in, and moving through, the Tasman World. Innovatively drawing on historical newspapers and a network of archives, she traces the careers of a diverse range of popular phrenologists and those they encountered. By analysing the actions at play in scientific episodes through ethnographic, social and cultural history, Roginski considers how this now-discredited science could, in its own day, yield fleeting power and advantage, even against a backdrop of large-scale dispossession and social brittleness.

The Globe

Author: James Hannam

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2023-08-12

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1789148081

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From Babylon to Columbus and beyond, a journey across millennia and—yes—the globe exploring how we came to understand our spherical planet. The Globe tells the story of humanity’s quest to discover the form of the world: that the Earth is round and not flat. Philosophers in ancient Greece deduced the true shape of the Earth in the fourth century BCE; the Romans passed the knowledge to India, from where it spread to Baghdad and Central Asia. In early medieval Europe, Christians debated the matter, but long before the time of Columbus, the Catholic Church had accepted that Earth is a ball. However, it wasn’t until the seventeenth century that Jesuit missionaries finally convinced the Chinese that their traditional square-earth cosmology was mistaken. An accessible challenge to long-established beliefs about the history of ideas, The Globe shows how the realization that our planet is a sphere deserves to be considered the first great scientific achievement.